[B-Greek] word order 1Jo 2.8

George F Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Wed Jun 1 13:44:15 EDT 2005


On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 16:51:49 +0200 "R Yochanan Bitan Buth"
<ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il> writes:
> This is a follow-up to 1 Cor 14:8 for evaluating word order 
> 
> OTI H SKOTIA PARAGETAI
> 
> KAI TO FWS TO ALHQINON HDH FAINEI
> 
> First clause has a new subject 'darkness' that I would call a
> Topicalization, 
> 
> that is, it is not the most salient part of the sentence but 
> provides
> a point of reference, a point of departure.
> 
> Then in the second clause we have two 'fronted' items:
> 
> 'the true light' is not the most salient item of the clause but
> provides a comparative/contrastive Topicalization, a point of
> reference for its clause and a point of reference to the larger
> context. 
> 
> I read 'already' as the most salient part of the second clause. It 
> is
> neither first not last, but it is fronted before the verb. It is a
> marked saliency, my definition of 'Focus'. Its position between the
> syntactical subject and verb suggests that the subject is not in 
> the
> default subject position but that the subject is also pragmatically
> motivated, supporting the Topicalization reading just mentioned 
> above.
> 
> When reading the text, I would recommend a focal intonation on
> 'already'. (Chet, you will hear it on the old MP3 I sent you.) 
> While
> other readings might be possible, I think that the reading 
> described
> above would be the most expected. 
> 
> Randall Buth
___________________

A check of appearances of the adv. HDH in the NT reveals that in
virtually 100% of the cases it appears before the verb.  Therefore, it
would seem that to say that it is "fronted" is no more meaningful than to
note that the particle DE is postpositive.  That's just the way it
functions.

george
gfsomsel
___________



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